When I was 29 and in a challenging relationship, I went to a psychic for guidance. I had just won a three week all expenses paid trip to Bali and it would be the longest time I would ever have been away from my young children. I’d managed five days before for my sister’s wedding in Vegas, but 21 days apart? Oof. I was convinced I was going to die. My anxiety was through the roof.
‘Oh you’re not going to die over there! You’re going to meet someone significant,’ she announced proudly.
‘Um, no,’ I scoffed, ‘I’m engaged, actually.’
‘You better be strong then, girl. Cause THIS is really someone.’ I laughed it off, she was wrong. If this current relationship didn’t last? I was more than happy to be a spinster for the rest of my life fostering dogs and cats from the Animal Welfare League, it was going to be awesome. I was relieved I wasn’t going to die, I’d believe that part of her spiel. And conveniently would discard her other predictions as they didn’t suit my narrative whatsoever.
I was one of 11 people selected by the head convenor of the Griffith University Creative Writing Course to be sent to Indonesia to volunteer at the Ubud Writer’s Festival in 2014. I took my kids to the first information session as I had no one else to take care of them. My daughter, aged three and a half at the time sat between me and a bearded guy. She absolutely hated men, but she seemed VERY animated and happy chatting so I didn’t pay much attention, just held her hand while I spoke to other people around the table. After the session she asked me ‘who is the man with the beard? I LOVE HIM!’ I was stunned. Interesting, I thought. ‘I think his name is Dean, baby.’
At a poetry event (maybe even that night) he and I wore the same coloured beanie and thick dark rimmed glasses. I asked him to take a photo with me as we were matchy matchy. I uploaded it to facebook without a second thought, and it wouldn’t be until we drove to the airport together weeks later (as fate would have it, everyone else crammed into a few vehicles and only he and I were left to travel alone) that we would have our first proper conversation.
‘Oh, so you’re engaged huh?’ He’d asked.
‘Yes, but….I’ve come to realise I can’t marry him, just in the last 24 hours. I proposed to him in hopes that we could reconnect if we had a wedding to plan that wasn’t about the kids. He avoids me, we argue a lot. It’s terrible. I can’t go through with it.’
‘Yikes.’
‘Yeah, we broke up last year and he asked me what I wanted and I said ‘all I want is to adopt a dog from the Animal Welfare League, and I will take it alone to the Dog Beach, and throw a stick with it for a few hours a weekend. And a veggie patch. And he agreed and has since renegged.’
‘Are you serious? You know what I do with my dog from the Animal Welfare League every weekend? I take him to the dog beach and throw a stick for a few hours.’
‘Huh?’ I shrieked.
‘And do you know what I do for a living? I run a company called ‘Gold Coast Garden Beds.’
‘WHAT?!’ I squealed. We realised we had so much more in common but this connection was just so easy and I assumed it would be just best friends. I just thought it was all a coincidence. That day I hashtagged us on Facebook as being ‘The Best Team on the Amazing Race’ as we navigated the airports and tuk tuks to our hotel. We were having so much fun I didn’t even realise what was actually growing between us. I thought you could choose and control who you have a connection with. Wrong! The damn psychic was right.
A part of our studies meant that each week we were in Bali we would have to write a story and read it to the group. We were supposed to be writing based on the experiences we were having, snorkelling, hiking up to view volcanos, attending religious ceremonies etc. We were mingling with authors and poets by night, soaking up their tips for getting published. It was incredible.
I met Mem Fox and we cried together sharing our experiences, what a moment after spending years reading her work to my kids and my students!
Dean and I even caught up Ketut Liyer, the healer /mentor of Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame. I was in heaven.
Initially everyone had been very uncomfortable seeing how much Dean and I laughed together, knowing I was engaged with young children. But then it happened. We’d gone to a bar with some great music and once Dean pulled me up to dance with him the floor soon cleared. It was entirely ours. I was wearing a black knit cardigan and a retro leopard pencil skirt and had a bright red lip. Were we Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone jiving before La La Land had even finished filming? Strangers were even taking photos of us, our friends had their hands over their mouths in shock at how FLAWLESS we were, honestly it was some serious Dancing with the Stars shit and I’d never even had lessons before. (He had in Modern Jive and men, let me tell you, what a fucking ACE thing to do, you won’t regret it).
One reserved guy in our group pulled us aside afterwards and said ‘fuck. Don’t worry what anyone else says to you, we all wish we were experiencing what you two are…. riding around the fucking paddy fields on your bikes giggling n’ shit. We’re all miserable! If you have an affair, I support it. I’ve never seen a connection like it. I won’t tell anyone. Then you go back to your family, Karleigh, but only if you want. You can’t ignore this, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.’ I was stunned. We appreciated his compassion for this pickle. An affair was never something I could engage in, and Dean a pretty committed Christian was against the idea as well. We maintained our friendship, and that night we escorted one of the group to the hospital after she swelled up like a blue blowfish in anaphylactic shock. Dean, a disability support worker and me, a mother who spoke Indonesian were her choices of support people and she didn’t want her parents back in Australia to know. What we went through that night together was intense and cemented our bond as an amazing team even in a crisis, not just being dicks dive bombing in the eternity pool.
Dean read his story to the group first and it was clearly NOT about the cultural things we were experiencing. It was dedicated to his feelings about our connection and how devastated he was that once we returned home I would marry another man who didn’t think I was the bees knees. What he wrote was the stuff wedding vows were made of, no one had ever spoken out loud and proud of me with such heart. The girls in the group were in tears and and I hid under a pillow on the couch, sobbing.
The rest is an incredible few chapters in my book, but in summary the space of the three weeks away I was to find who Karleigh is when she’s not an exhausted, working, studying, mother of young children (it’s hilarious now as that’s pretty much been my identity ever since!). It gave me such clarity after years of agony trying to force a square peg into a round hole. We were ships in the night, we had nothing in common and argued over everything. I ended the relationship over the phone (we had broken up a gazillion times in person before) and when I received a birthday card that said ‘Happy 30th Birthday, all the best for your future’ for my birthday at my hotel in Bali FROM him with a bunch of flowers, it was clear he had reflected and agreed and accepted the decision to end things. We were doing this maturely and lovingly. We were consciously uncoupling. It was perfect. He must have realised how unhappy he was and he was free to find his happiness and I was now free to explore this incredible connection. I felt alive and seen and truly appreciated for the first time in years or maybe actually ever, with Dean.
On the plane on the way home, Dean and I acknowledged we needed to part for a while. I had to go home and deal with the mess I had made. You see, it turns out my ex had never written ‘Happy 30th birthday, all the best for your future’ in the card. The hotel had added the second part without his consent, after he’d rung my hotel and ordered the flowers, a gluten free chocolate cake and paid for drinks for me. The hotel had never explained this. I assumed Balinese hotels were just incredibly generous, and I had turned my birthday cake away, explaining I couldn’t eat gluten.
You know the Japanese saying ‘If you get on the wrong train, get off at the next station. The longer you stay, the more expensive the return trip becomes.’ Let me tell you, this is gospel. Don’t question it. (Then again, I learnt SO much from this experience…if you too are a sucker for learning…)
Dean and I got together soon after and had a remarkable nine months together, rebuilding my life from scratch with the clothes on my back, a phone, a laptop and a newly signed contract to become a Thermomix Consultant.
This here interview was us this April, catching up to celebrate our ten years of breaking up. Dean Louise Barker, you’re something else and I’m so glad to have met you. If anything ever happens to either of us, I hope you know how much you enhanced my life and continue to crack me up. You’re a joy to the world and thanks for being a true friend. Anyone would be very blessed to have you as a partner!
For those of you hanging on to dead relationships, who no longer respect, admire and cherish their partners, let them go so they can go find their person. Because this story could have had a very different ending if it hadn’t been so damn complicated in the first place.
Luckily for true love, you don’t have to be romantically linked to love each other unconditionally or forever.
Swings and roundabouts at it’s finest!
Karleigh.
‘Oh you’re not going to die over there! You’re going to meet someone significant,’ she announced proudly.
I DON’T THINK A PSYCHIC HAS EVER SAID THAT to me BEFORE, OR SINCE.
Swings & Roundabouts 